This is from the SmartList list originally. I'm crossposting this
intriguing discussion to both lists for the time being; I suppose this
really could move to procmail-dev properly (nobody complained when I
proposed to use that list for discussions like this). Thus, I also
include procmail-dev, and direct followups there.
On Thu, 17 Aug 2000 02:35:17 -0500, guenther+smartlist(_at_)gac(_dot_)edu wrote:
Charlie Summers <charlie(_at_)lofcom(_dot_)com> writes:
At 11:01 PM -0400 8/16/00, Philip Guenther is rumored to have typed:
The maintainer is not the leader. The job of maintainer is to express
the concensus desire in a machine readable form.
Since you appear to be doing the bulk of the coding, you are indeed the
"leader," whether you necessarily want to be or not.
This is where I see what happened as telling about the procmail &
SmartList communities: who was there to take on maintainence of either
of these packages? How many people at that point had submitted more
than one patch or chunk of code to either procmail or SmartList?
I think this could be fixed. If you look at some of the people on the
SmartList list, they have already contributed stuff which would at a
minimum be suitable for inclusion in the distribution as a contrib/
"use at your own risk" directory or something. It was never sent in
for consideration (as far as I know) but work has been done, and some
of it really should be included in one form or another (subscriber
verification for SmartList, for example -- it should be standard and
turned on by default!)
What this operation truly lacks is coordination. Some of the blame
falls on me; I'm listed as something like "volunteer coordinator" in
the README file -- but nobody ever really asked me if I would accept
that title or role (although in some ways it was implicit).
Anyway, I'm willing to take up that challenge, in principle, but right
now I'm probably too overloaded with "real work" to be able to
contribute anything meaningful.
I think we should have another IRC chat with Stephen and the other
folks who originally were interested in the procmail.org idea, perhaps
in early September. I can volunteer to write up an agenda, based on
earlier messages in this thread. I can also call Stephen and ask him
what day and time would be suitable (or Philip, if you're going to
call him anyway at some point, can you bring this up?)
I'll try to monitor these lists a little bit more actively over the
next few weeks, but it would help me keep focused if there would be
"procmail.org" in the Subject line of everything pertaining to this.
The list at the bottom the README file would seem to indicate that
you could count those people on one hand, and that's still true
today. To ensure stability, that number should probably be greater
than 20, with at least a handfull (not one!) having write access to
the source.
I'd be in favor of giving Whom It May Concern some sort of write
access, and see what comes of it. If (whoever will be running)
procmail.org is not willing to put up an Anon CVS server, it can be
moved to sourceforge.net or something.
The "official" releases would of course have to be coordinated and
controlled but right now, I think I would personally at least see a
more straightforward way to send in patches and have people try them
out on their own risk.
It appears that the SmartList and procmail communities are too
small, too content, too busy, or too inexperienced to _sustain_
Open Source development. Until those conditions disappear, procmail
and SmartList will be in danger of becoming unmaintained. The
status of the lists is just a reflection of this.
With better planning, you can do wonders. The problem is, planning is
boring and "eats up" enthusiasm. But I think a good agenda and some
shared goals would be a way to get this thing started again. If you
can see others contribute, you will have more incentive to send in
your own little suggestion, too. Bootstrapping this process -- finding
and coaching the first contributors -- is perhaps not "fun" but it can
lead to more and better fun down the road. :-)
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